Unless otherwise indicated herein, the description in this section is not prior art to the claims in this application and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
In a typical image forming system referred to as a pull print, spooling a print job from a user terminal in a document management server on a network ensures any image forming apparatus to designate and print the print job spooled in the document management server.
The following print management server has been proposed as the print management server related to the image forming system. That is, while the print management server holds a print job of a pull print addressed to a user terminal in one's own device, the print management server estimates an index value indicative of a magnitude of a possibility that the user terminal uses a multi-functional peripheral an output destination of the print job for each multi-functional peripheral from a location of a user, a schedule, an installation location of the multi-functional peripheral, and the like and selects the multi-functional peripherals candidate for the output destination within the maximum number of maximum devices based on the estimated index value. When any of the multi-functional peripherals causes a failure, the print management server notifies the user terminal of the failure in the multi-functional peripheral only when the multi-functional peripheral is selected as the candidate for the output destination.